


My tethers make me strong

by svenman



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:47:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28088757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/svenman/pseuds/svenman
Summary: Alternate title: Tenzin learns to fly lolYeah basically I love Tenzin and I wanted him to fly so I made this
Relationships: Jinora/Kai (Avatar), Korra/Asami Sato, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 24





	My tethers make me strong

**Author's Note:**

> I know this fic totally breaks the established canon on how flying works in the Avatar universe but I love Tenzin and he deserves it so idc  
> Enjoy!

It had been over a month since the Day of the Colossus, as it had come to be known by the citizens of Republic City, when Kuvira attempted to conquer Republic City only to be stopped by the Avatar and her fellow heroes. Tenzin was sat by the cliffs on Air Temple Island, cross-legged on the ground, eyes closed, hands in his lap – meditating. 

His city, and his new people, the Air Nomads, were at peace once again, and all his loved ones were safe. He was feeling a sense of contentment, until suddenly his mind was struck with an image from over three years before. 

He saw Zaheer, flying through the sky, carrying Korra away. He saw him battling with the poisoned Korra through the skies. Finally, he saw the hurricane created by his people bring down Zaheer from the skies. It was a sequence that had plagued his mind intermittently since the day it occurred, but it still concerned him. 

Even Tenzin’s father, Avatar Aang, had not been able to achieve such impressive airbending as the ability to fly, and yet somehow Zaheer had managed it with only a few weeks of experience with airbending. Tenzin thought back to the texts he had read as a child of the great Guru Laghima – he had thought them merely a children’s tale at the time, but no longer. 

Finally, Tenzin made a decision. The fighting had stopped – there was no more war to be waged or evil spirits to stop. He finally had the time to spend to unlock flight for himself. 

As he sat in his meditative stance, he began to ponder all the times he had seen flight. He thought of Zaheer, fighting in mid-air. He thought of Korra, levitating in the Avatar State. He even thought of the times he himself had flown, though with much less stability, through the creation of powerful air currents. 

He focused all his energy into a point just below his body, and pushed down with his hands. As he did so, he felt his body become lighter, and his feet lift off the floor, but as he looked down, he saw the air billowing underneath him. 

_“This is not what Zaheer did,”_ Tenzin thought to himself, sighing as he lowered himself back to the ground. Zaheer, and Guru Laghima according to the stories, had been truly weightless, freeing their energy so they could float through the air effortlessly. 

* * *

Tenzin sat at the table, eating dinner with his whole family in his home on Air Temple Island. His wife, children, and siblings sat around him, with Korra and Asami as their guests for the evening. 

“Kya,” Tenzin said suddenly, “You spoke with Zaheer when he was here. Do you remember anything he said that seemed odd?” 

“Tenzin, what’s brought this on?” Pema interjected, a note of concern in her voice. “Zaheer is locked away for good, you don’t need to worry about him any more!” 

“Of course, Pema, I know that. I’ve just been thinking about him lately – about his flight. I want to understand how he did it. Humour me, Kya?” 

“Fine, Tenzin,” Kya spoke up. “Of course he seemed odd, he was a dangerous criminal pretending to be an innocent airbender. I don’t remember him saying anything about flight at all. Pema’s right, he’s gone. We should- ” 

“I remember something!” Ikki suddenly shouted from across the table. 

“What? What did he say to you?” Tenzin looked eagerly at her. 

“He was in your study in the middle of the night. He had a little necklace with a poem from some old guru. He was telling me about it, but then Auntie Kya sent me back to bed.” 

“The Poems of Laghima!” Tenzin shot up and ran from the room, dinner forgotten on the table. Pema simply sighed, as Korra giggled from across the room, head resting in Asami’s lap. 

* * *

Tenzin rushed to his study, and rooted through his desk, until he found his original mint-condition copy of The Poems of Guru Laghima. He flipped through until he found the poem he was looking for, then sat down and began to read aloud. 

_“Let go your Earthly Tether  
Enter the Void  
Empty  
and Become Wind” _

Tenzin slumped back in his chair, defeated. He knew that his responsibilities were too important for him to detach himself from the world. What would happen to the Air Nation without him? More importantly, what would happen to his children without him? 

He realised that he simply had to accept that he would never be able to experience the detachment that Zaheer and Guru Laghima had obtained. Even Zaheer had only managed it after P’Li, the one he loved, had been killed. 

Tenzin returned to the dinner table, somewhat dejected, but at least satisfied that he had come to a conclusion on the matter of flight. He decided that he would bring it up as a topic when he was next teaching the new Air Nomads, but resigned himself to the fact that he would never experience it himself. 

* * *

It was a cool evening in Republic City, and Tenzin sat once again on the cliff edge, meditating. Two weeks had passed since his investigations into flight, and he had (mostly) accepted that flight was simply an ability that would never be available to him. However, as he sat calmly, breathing in and out, in and out, in and out, his thoughts drifted to the ideas of Guru Laghima. He considered what it would be like to separate himself fully from his ‘Earthly Tether’. 

He thought of Korra, his protégé, who he often thought of as his daughter. He remembered her helping him rebuild the Air Nation after more than a hundred years, and he thought on how much she reminded him of his father sometimes. 

_“My tethers make me strong,”_ he thought. 

He thought of his siblings, Kya and Bumi, and his parents, reminiscing on his childhood, on all the happy memories he shared not just with his father, but with the rest of his family too. He remembered the years he spent apart from them, and then grew warm at the thought of the closeness he now shared with both of his siblings. 

“My tethers make me strong,” he whispered into the night. 

He thought of his wife and his children. He remembered the first time he met Pema when he visited the Air Acolytes with his father. He remembered each of the days when each of his children had airbended for the very first time. He remembered the tears of joy he had openly shed on the day Jinora received her tattoos as a designation of her mastery over the air. 

“My tethers make me strong!” He was talking loudly now, though there was nobody around to hear. 

Finally, he thought of the new Air Nomads. He thought of how proud he was of every single one of them. He thought about Jinora and Kai sneaking off to see the baby sky bison, of Bumi surprising everyone when he airbended for the first time, of all his people working together as a nation to bring Zaheer, and of the deep sense of community fostered between all of them. 

**“My tethers make me strong!”** Tenzin shouted into the wind, and though there was nobody around, he felt a slight shifting in the air around him. 

He opened his eyes slowly, and as he looked down, his jaw dropped. He was hovering, perfectly still, a good six feet off the ground! The transition from sitting to floating had been so smooth, he hadn’t even felt himself leave the ground save from the slight breeze on his shaved skull. 

Tenzin was overjoyed. He was flying, without expending even a drop of effort on his behalf! He took off, soaring through the sky around Air Temple Island, before going on a cruise in the air over Republic City. People stopped and stared in the street below him, but he felt too free to care at that moment. 

Before he even realised, he had made it all across the city, and just as he was flying over the police station on his way back to Air Temple Island, he heard a familiar shout from the ground far below. 

“It’s Zaheer, he’s escaped! Mako, get Korra!” Lin Beifong’s voice rang out in the streets below, and while it projected an image of cool command, Tenzin had known her long enough to hear the panic in her tone. 

Realising immediately what she must have assumed, Tenzin went into a nosedive, before cushioning his descent at the last minute with his airbending. “Lin, wait!” he called out to her. “It’s me! I did it, I can fly!” 

Lin looked over at Tenzin, who was currently floating a couple of inches off the ground, with her eyes wide, and her jaw slack. “Tenzin!?” she exclaimed, failing to hide the shock in her voice. She quickly composed herself, the stone exterior rising back up as quickly as it had fallen. “You know what? I’m too tired for this. You can tell me tomorrow.” 

Tenzin smiled at her, a rare sight even for the Chief of Police, as he flew off into the night to return to his home. He felt a sense of true calm wash over him, for what seemed like the first time since Korra had arrived in Republic City. 

* * *

As Tenzin lay in bed that night, his family surrounding him, all of them sound asleep, he reflected on his first flight, and came to a decision. He decided that he would make a promise to himself, that he would swear to always remember to spend some of his time with both feet firmly planted on the ground. 

After all, it was that which kept him tethered to the earth that made him strong. 


End file.
